Hey can we stop driving buses?

[Mekkah]

Bus Driver: Targets 2 people. Anyone targeting target 1 is redirected to target 2, and vice versa. (double reverse martyr, for my fellow people collecting veteran discounts).

For two recent OC games (ipl's Multirecruitment Mafia and UncleSam's Mafia Mafia 3) Bus Driver has shown to be a major force of disruption, partially because it was higher priority than all others. This higher priority is often deemed necessary because otherwise the role becomes a worse version of roleblocker, redirector, martyr, reverse martyr, and so on. But the higher priority also makes it so there is no counterplay. It doesn't help that Bus Driver can usually self-target, which was instrumental to for example the MM3 wolf (Bass) who became effectively unkillable at night, and therefore untouchable for the mafia since they didn't have control of the vote. The endgame of MM3 ended in a weird WIFOM state where some viable plays included mafia goons aiming kills at themselves in the hopes of getting that bus driven into a villager.

It's not uncommon for mafia games to have an element of RNG be big, or even the deciding factor in games. But this seems over the top.

So let's not put Bus Driver in games anymore, maybe?

[Side note: I don't know if standards on this have changed but way back when, redirector was considered too powerful of a role to just hand out as an unlimited use ability, and reverse martyr was considered a fairly average powered role - good due to its synergy with bodyguard, but not broken. Now it seems games have power crept a fair bit, which might be why Bus Driver seems to have become a bit of a staple.]

 

[zorbees]

self targeting on it definitely shouldn't exist

also, if you have a priority system like i'm using in big city, bus driver isn't as big of an issue because you can disrupt it with things like roleblock or martyr or safeguard, while not making those roles too overpowered because you can disrupt those too. this type of priority system avoids the "boogeyman" scenario where the highest priority role will always seem too strong since it cannot have counterplay. the only way you can have something that cannot be disrupted is with passive protection or whatever, like how some of the mm3 neutrals were unaffected by non-killing roles

 

[Yeti]

If you want to use bus driver, imo:
1. Make it unable to self-target
2. Make it run on two separate priority scales:
- the first is the act of bus driving by the role itself, which should be lower than any other disruptive in the game and thus blockable by a hook, jailkeep, etc
- the second is the drive between target 1 and 2, which should be higher priority than any other disruptive so the targets are switched for the purposes of kills, info, etc

This gives the role proper counterplay while still allowing for a skillful use to swap someone into a kill or out of protection

 

[Ditto]

 

[NightEmerald]

add me to the list if there’s gonna be like.. a petition

 

[Mekkah]

this thread is now a petition

 

[sunny004]

I like Yeti's reform ideas. Failing that I think a total removal of unlimited bus drive may be warranted given the relative lack of counterplay + disruption

 

[Duskfall98]

Bus driver and redirector, along with other forms of these roles are very common in standard role madness for noc and eimm and I think these probably can be expected in most ocs too since they are role madness.

That being said, I actually think high priority roles are debatably stronger than bus driver, at the very least its the same tier of role. By combining high priority bus driver, who can self target (usually they cant), you make a super op role for sure and I think this version should either be stopped, or at least desgined around to consider counter play.

Typically a bus drive or redirector is not acting before all the other roles in the game, and they also cant self target. This means that as soon as its known, you can disrupt them via a roleblocker, a safeguard or possible other means in the specific game. I don't think there's really a need to veto the usage of these roles in themselves as an idea, but the whole lets supercharge them so they don't fail ever breaks them.

I will add that I personally see a problem in the priority system in the last two oc games (but MUCH more so in ipls). Roles can auto balance themselves more if you don't say "this one absolutely acts first". Example bus driver, and roleblock should be equal priority in my view, and when you get a few roles in a chain conflicting, you should resolve the top of the chain first and work down. This can be a lot more difficult to do as a host, but it allows for players to make much more counterplay in game, so I do feel its worth.

Example: if a busdriver is targetted by a roleblock, the busdrive fails. But if a busdriver succeeds with their action, they would redirect a roleblocker who has also targetted one of their targets.

 

[JALMONT]

I like bus drivers. It's an interesting role that can carry some risk vs something like a redirector which is single target. It is very strong in a perfect information setting for the owner of the role as it creates uncertainty that can't be solved by other factions. this is not something that happens in NOC very often if at all, hence why it's a relatively common fun role to throw in, as you can't really abuse it like it was used in mm3.

I don't think it's more unfair than something like a redirector or unblockable/expert kills. the problem with the role as presented is that it's noninteractive which can be remedied by the many suggestions made so far. you could even have it so that it doesn't affect kills. with a little tweaking it's a pretty balanced role i feel

 

[Blazade]

I think even with a logic based priority system or more natural checks, the fact is that bus driver is a role with a very high ceiling of effectiveness. A vanilla nightly bus driver, in both of the previous games, was seen as one of the top 3 roles in frankly ridiculously high powered settings. A contributing factor to the power of other roles in those games was the ability to pick up one use of a bus drive.

It is a control and protective role. As a defensive measure, it has the ability to essentially act as an omniguard, and the reward for redirecting a kill is much higher than simply blocking it. Predicting kill targets is also much easier than predicting killers: within a faction kills can often be assigned arbitrarily, making the choice of killer WIFOM. Targets, on the other hand, are chosen by their value to the faction being targeted and place in the longer term endgame. There will always be guesswork over kill targets, but this is more rationally weighted, and the bus driver has the final say in what gets protected. It's measurably stronger and more consistent than a redirect or a BG. Additionally, it's very effective at stripping protection to open the way for killers to take out their own high value targets. Depending on what is allowed to block bus drives, it may be able to "sneak" its way around lots of traditional protection.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, even if there are countermeasures against it, the versatility and power of a role like this offers a high skill ceiling and an even higher ceiling of possible benefits. Planning actions around a potential opposing bus drive is difficult, and using one creates threats that can force your opponent's hand in ways you can predict and further use to your advantage. I think there are games with roles that can bridge the gap, where every player has lots of decisions to make and lots of upside for playing well. But it should be added with intention, and respect other player's time and interest by including roles just as good for them as well.

As the OC community gets older and smarter I think it's most important to consider the tactics in endgame scenarios where everyone knows everything about each other's roles. I will certainly be doing my best to innovate on this front, but this is one of the main draws of OC (being able to coordinate complex action plans in secret), and I think we can learn a few lessons from how recent games have used bus driving to improve lower power games (by excluding it) and higher power games (by tweaking with the priority and expanding the depth of other roles).